Today's Hello Pro Love post is Fujimoto Miki's "Romantic Ukare Mode". Miki originally auditioned in the 4th generation auditions for Morning Musume and wowed with her singing talent and cute look. However, she was kept on to train as a solo artist under HP and released a few original songs and participated in shuffle groups. In 2002 "Romantic Ukare Mode" was released and after it's immense popularity as well as Miki's outstanding performance on the famous New Years - Kouhaku Uta Gassen, Tsunku decided to add Miki as a member of the 6th generation of Morning Musume. Romantic Ukare Mode is arguably Miki''s defining song as a HP member. The song is cute, motivational and memorable - and the dance is unique, and which hardcore fans have turned into a special wota chant for Miki. Watch the live performvideo below to see just how popular this song is - the wotas go crazy (Miki was very popular with the fans!).

Today's Hello Pro Love post is Takahashi Ai's Morning Musume Graduation song -"Jishin Motte".At the time Ai (and fellow 5th gen member Risa) had the longest tenures of any MM member - being approx. 10 years. Ai, known for her singing talent and beauty, had been an ace of the group and was a lead singer and performer for almost her entire time in the group. When Fujimoto Miki abruptly left the group in 2007, Ai was made leader of Morning Musume and had the longest tenure as leader, graduating in the autumn of 2011."Jishin Motte" was devised as her special graduation song to go with her last MM single (Kono Chikyu...) and the song also had it's own music video. Being an ace in the group for a decade as well as beng leader for around 4 years - Ai definitley deserved a special send-off for her graduation. "Jishin Motte" is a cool and epic song and the electric guitar and drums give it a rocky feel. Ai looked really grown-up in the video, with a cool jacket and jeans - and the symbolic use of the photographs showing her history in Morning Musume, is a cute addition in the background. Overall, this is a pretty cool song and was an epic send-off for one of Morning Musume's pros.

"Miss Love Tantei" (miss love detective) came out in 2005, and is one of my favourite Hello Project songs - certainly in my top 10. W (doubleyou) were a HP duo made up of Tsuji Nozomi and Ai Kago, who debuted as "W" in 2004 after graduating from Morning Musume. The music video is super-cute, and there's much more going on than your standard HP music video - (normally just dancing and closeups with sparkles). If you watch the full music video, note the "ganguro" look in one of the scenes...There is a cool little rap in this song, and the singing is much more advanced in comparison to the overly-sugared voices that W often sang with (checkout Kago's jazz singing on youtube - she's got a great voice). Overall, this is a very good song, and was mainstream enough that it could have spurred W on to much bigger things. The costumes are also really cute and both girls look really polished in this video.Although W's thrid album was never released (due to scandals, and consequently W becoming inactive); "Miss Love Tantei" stands out as a very memorable single in the history of Hello Project and after all W were a very popular and significant group at the time. (If you want to find out more about W, research them on a Hello Project Wiki - Tsuji and Kago are now mothers and successful at many different enterprises). Below: I have linked a "Dance Shot" version of Miss Love Tantei, but also watch the Full MV version if you can.

As it approaches Halloween I would like to share this music video if you haven't seen it already.-Mina Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (Takemura Kiriko ) is best known for her music video 'Pon pon pon'. Originally a fashion blogger, she was picked up as a model for popular Harajuku fashion magazines. Soon enough in 2011 she started a musical career and has been pretty popular and definitely has gone viral.

I actually really love Pon Pon Pon and wondered if she may be a jpop one trick pony. However, after listening to Candy Candy I decided to give Fashion Monster a try.

And here are the results!

The song itself is catchy from the get go. People I know that don't like jpop can be heard reluctantly humming this tune. I think it's incredibly cute and definitely interesting. The music video itself starts out with an awesomesauce shot of Kyary Pamyu's bat shaped hairpiece! It's incredibly cool and very unique. The outfit she wears keeps to the halloween feel, but more importantly is most certainly inspired by Tim Burton films. Her dress looks straight out of Beetlejuice, but with her own flair. The whole of the video has this 'Tim Burton' feel, but if Tim Burton were still making good films (No offence to fans out there, but the last good film he made [imho] was Nightmare before Christmas). The video's story to me seemed like a house party interrupted by a giant malicious looking monster who is hungry enough to eat the house (which looks like a palace) along with the innocent partying residents. Luckily the monster is placated by the singing and dancing inside and merely spits on Kyary Pamyu instead. This is roughly what I get out of it. Although there is so much going on in the video I'll never be completely sure. Everyone in the video seems to be having a great , scary fun time and it makes you wish you were invited to this party even if the local neighbors have a problem keeping in their pink spittle! Afterall, Kyary Pamyu doesn't seem to mind the waterfall, why should we? The choreography for this music video is pretty good. I didn't think it was all that special – nothing like the inspiring (and mostly) improvised Pon Pon Pon. However the visuals make up for it and in her typical style every time you watch the music video you'll probably spot something new. Music: 7/10 Costume: 9/10 Dance: 6/10 Music Video: 8/10Overall: 7/10

Today's Hello Pro Love post is one of my favourite Hello Project songs of all time: "Goodbye Natsuo" (goodbye summer boy) from the former HP soloist Aya Matsuura. I love this song - it's energetic and cool; and the music video is super-cute and colourful.

In my opinion, Aya Matsuura is a really good example of what an "idol" should be. Please look up my other personal favourite Aya songs: "Chocolate Damashii", "Nee" and "Wataresebashi".

The multi-talented Goto Maki ( a former ace of Morning Musume, and probably one of it's most famous members) graduated Morning Musume in 2002 to take on a solo career under Hello Project. "Yaruki! It's Easy" was her 4th solo single and it is super-cute, motivational song. I remember especcially loving the music video - not only are Melon Kinenbi backing-dancers, but the and dance are really cute and the video has a cute, magical-love story within it (which is uncommon in today's mainly-danceshot videos). I might add that Maki makes a cute man in this video too!

V-U-Den (1st gen) were formed in 2004 (and were active in Hello Project until 2008), with former MM member Ishikawa Rika as the star, and they appealed to the wotas with their "mature" image. "Aisu Kuriimu to my Purin" seemed like an unlikely choice for one of my favourite Hello Pro songs... but I really like this one - the lyrics are cheeky ("aisu kuriimu can mean Icecream and "Love"cream) and almost humourous and I especcially like the video. The dance is really cute and so are the bunny-girl costumes plus Ishikawa Rika dons a Monroe-esque outfit in the official music video!

V-U-Den were an unusual group in Hello Project history and overall this single stands out as being significant for it's "ero-kawaii" appeal.

I personally have been waiting a while for Morning Musume to throw something out there that really stuck. Things have been rocky for a while, but with their newest single, “Wakuteka Take a Chance” I'm really starting to feel like Morning Musume has 'come back'. It hit #3 On oricon with 54,047 Sales on it's first day, currently 26 but having peaked at number 1 since then.

Onwards to the review!

I'm not a huge fan of auto-tune. I'm a singer myself and feel like this is a lazy way to make someone sound better than they are. Auto-tune is used everywhere nowadays, but atleast Morning Musume doesn't try to hide the fact that a certain (cute!) member is auto-tuned frequently. I don't mind it so much if it goes with an electronic feel of the tune and especially don't mind so much if there's no coyness about using auto-tune. “Wakuteka Take a Chance” is heavily auto-tuned even when the members obviously have a great voice – which evens out the roughness and cringe of hearing it for me. In fact I really liked it in this song and thought it worked well with the high pop visual of the video. The music video itself has been featured on Morning Musume's youtube page along with a rehearsal version. There is also a version where the dance teachers perform the song's choreography because the producer wanted to really get across the 'feel' for the song. Considering two members were injured at the time I suppose it makes sense, but it must play on the minds of the current members! I really like the music video for this song. There's something very entertaining about the overall lightning and fast cuts, however I feel we could have used more dance bits. There are some really great zoom shots of each of the girls that really shows off their personalities and this is great to finally see! I'm hoping they come out with a Dance-shot only version! On to the costumes! Okay, I have to say I didn't like these costumes very much. I thought they clashed with the video and reminded me too much of Halloween for an October release. I feel like the song itself has some adult tones, but they tried to soften the video with the costumes being very cute and modest which is very Morning Musume! The costumes weren't bad, I just didn't like them as much as I normally like their costumes. Maybe I'm a bit odd here! :P Overall: 8/10 Music: 8/10 Costume: 6/10 Dance: 7/10 Music Video: 9/10

Today's Hello Pro Love post is about Melon Kinenbi's "Kousui". I love Melon Kinenbi (one of the only former Hello Project groups to stay the same for like... 10 years!), and "Kousui" (Perfume) was one of their most popular songs.The song tells a mature story about a woman in love in a relationship. The man does not reciprocate her feelings, but nonetheless she continues to wait on him, thinking that it will eventually get better.

"There’s always A nice smell of perfume in your car It’s not mine It smells nice, but I hate it..."

To continue my posts about my favourite Hello Pro songs, I want to start with an old favourite, Koi no Hana (Flower of love) by Abe Natsumi (a former ace of Morning Musume). I adore this cute, feminine song - the words that come to me when I try to describe it is that this is a song that evokes a simplistic, fresh and pretty love feeling. Nacchi has such a cute, little voice and it fits her perfectly. It's very refreshing to listen to, and it strikes me as being so innocent in comparison to modern popular music. I love the beginning chorus: "On that day, at that time, in that place, I met you, And in a wind that sent flower petals raining down, I made a promise, And I will always be here for you, Please nurture this flower of love".

This song has such sweet and naiive lyrics - I like to listen to this song in the morning to give me that sparkley care-free feeling!

When I started middle school I made friends with lots of international students from the local international-boarding house.Three of my class mates were from Japan, and we became good friends during middle school (almost 10 years later we still exchange mail!). Through my Japanese classmates I was introduced to Morning Musume when my friend Sayaka made copies of their CDs for me (⌒_⌒;) >> since they couldn't be purchased in the UK. I became instantly hooked, listening to their 3rd Love Paradise album on repeat 'til it stopped working... (╯︵╰,)Even though I didn't understand the lyrics, I really enjoyed the upbeat, youthful music and the cute, energetic music videos. Even the "cooler" or more mellow songs appealed as they portrayed the sort-of "dramatic" and "delicate" feelings that a young woman could relate to. The members always looked effortlessly perfect and carefree, and I spent all of middle school fantasising about what it would be like to be in a girl-group like Morning Musume. From then on I became a big fan of Morning Musume and subsequently all the artists in Hello Project.

Many years later, and Morning Musume's line-up has changed so much that none of the members from when I first started listening are still active in the group. But I've endeavoured to keep up with the times, and follow Morning Musume and Hello Project's progress and changes. I love many different musical artists, from different genres and different countries, but there is still a special place (perhaps within my inner-child? (=｀ω´=) ) for Morning Musume and Hello Project. So from now on, I will post about my favourite songs (old and new) so please check them out!

For today, I would like to share one of my old favourites, from the "Golden Era" of MM - The Peace!As a younger school student, I did not appreciate how "quirky" the music video was - I did not really think much on the presence of the toilets... But even as a woman this is still enjoyable to watch! This iconic song reminds me of happy middle-school memories, please enjoy it too! (★^O^★)